International Centre for Comparative Criminological Research (ICCCR)
Aims & Objectives
The Centre's research is aimed at academic, policy and practitioner audiences. Valuable links have been established with ‘external’ institutions at home and abroad. ICCCR is formally partnered with the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, based in London. International networks have been established with the EPSRC funded International Centre for Advanced Research in Identification Science.
Between 2006 and 2009 the ICCCR was part of the CRIMPREV consortium of 31 universities and research institutes across the EU working on a three-year project aimed at producing comparative knowledge about perceptions of crime and deviance and crime prevention strategies. The project was funded by the EU under FP 6. The Open University hosted the conference that concluded the project in the summer of 2009.
The Centre hosts the academic journal: Youth Justice : A International Journal (in partnership with University of Liverpool), Members sit on the editorial boards of the British Journal of Criminology, and the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice
The centre's key areas of expertise lie in the broad fields of:
- policing
- justice, rights and regulation
- prisons/penology
Policing
- Contemporary policing and social divisions
- Forensic psychology, police surveillance, suspect identification, and witness memory and evidence
Justice, rights and regulation
- Youth justice policy and reform
- Corporate and environmental regulation
- Restorative justice initiatives
Prisons and penology
- The sociology of imprisonment
- Social support in prisons
Coherence between these subject areas is maintained through a shared interest in comparative methodologies (historical and/or cross-cultural) and in a concern for processes of governance and regulation. A key concern of the Centre is to analyse how the meaning of crime, policing and criminal justice is embedded within changing local and international, historical and cultural contexts.
Centre members have strong research interests in contemporary and emerging forms of governance and strategies of policing and regulation. This includes the role of the criminal law in identifying and investigating ‘social harms’, the shifting boundaries between public and private agencies, the submersion of social policy matters into law and order agendas, the role of the media in constructing public notions of crime and punishment and changing forms of institutional regulation and accountability..
Research Affiliations and Partners
ICCCR draws its membership from a number of departments within the Open University. As such, its research expertise is widely distributed. However, in addition to the individual and collective research being pursued by members, a number of affiliated research centres and partners maintain their own identity and host specific research seminars and conferences. Details of each ‘partner’ can be found below.
International Centre for the History of crime, policing and justice
The International Centre for the History of crime, policing and justice is based in the Faculty of Arts at the Open University (History Department) and was established (formerly as the European Centre for the Study of Policing) in 1990. Directed by Dr Paul Lawrence, the Centre aims to promote and facilitate research into the history and practice of modern policing around the world (since c. 1750), and to generate the exchange of ideas between academics, criminal justice practitioners and serving policemen. This is achieved via seminars, conferences, publications and the provision of specialist archive facilities. The Centre has a number of research specialisms including: the history of policing in Europe and in the colonies, the rights of the poor; poverty and welfare; and the history of punishment, from public bodily punishments to prisons.
The Centre has strong links with the Groupe Européen de Recherche sur les Normativités (GERN) and close connections with the Institut des Hautes Etudes de la Sécurité Intérieure (IHESI) and the Arbeitsgruppe zur Polizeigeschichte.
The Centre holds a substantial collection of international police-related journals, newsletters and articles, but mainly it contains documentation on the British police, for instance the Metropolitan Police Force, Commissioners Reports, Policing on Scottish Burghs, etc. It also keeps copies of Metropolitan Police Orders dating from 1865 to the 1950s and Justice of the Peace dating from 1863 to 1965.
The Forensic Psychology Research Group
The Forensic Psychology Research Group is based in the psychology discipline in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. The group has close links with a range of policing organisations and most research work is aimed at policing policy, investigative procedures and practice. This has included revisions to the PACE Codes and drafting the Memorandum of Good Practice and ACPO guidelines to accompany new legislation. The group has attracted substantial external funding from the Home Office, EPSRC and the BPS.
Centre for Crime and Justice Studies
The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) is based in London and operates as an independent public interest charity that engages with the worlds of criminal justice research and policy, practice and campaigning. The Centre's current mission is to inspire enduring change by promoting understanding of social harm, the centrality of social justice and the limits of criminal justice. Its vision is of a society in which everyone benefits from equality, safety, social and economic security.
It was first established in July 1931 as the 'Association for the Scientific Treatment of Criminals'. It was renamed the 'Institute for the Scientific Treatment of Delinquency' in July 1932, and the 'Institute for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency' in 1951. It adopted its current name - the 'Centre for Crime and Justice Studies' - in 1999. The Centre produces an extensive range of publications on different aspects of criminal justice, including research reports, policy briefing papers, pamphlets, journal articles, lecture presentations and speeches.
The Centre also owns the British Journal of Criminology and produces a quarterly magazine, Criminal Justice Matters.